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Calculus homework. I took my first calc. exam last Friday and got it back yesterday, scoring a 89%. I would have done better if I hadn't been rushed at the end, but the professor is allowing everyone to correct their mistakes to get back some more points. I'm going to do this, since I actually figured out the last problem shortly after the exam was over (I was a couple minus sings off).
Pictured is my homework—calculating derivatives and drawing tangent lines. Visible is my trusty graphing calculator, who has been a great help. It can calculate limits and derivatives as well as plot functions. I use it a lot to check my answerers. It's a good check to plot a tangent line for a point on a function with the function to see if you got it or not.
So far, everything I have been learning is theory. But I can see how it's going to help in physics applications. Nothing like trigonometry yet, where I'm going home and using what I learned in class on a real-world problem.
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Calculating energy costs/loaf of bread. Pay around $1.12 per 100,000 BTUs of natural gas. My oven's burner is likely around 17,000 BTU based on the average burner size for ovens. Estimating high, the burner probably run for 30 minutes during the cooking process of my bread. This includes 30 minutes of baking at 350 degrees F and staying warm (maybe 150 F) for an hour and a half. That comes out to about $0.10/loaf of natural gas.
Electricity costs are pretty negligible. It costs around $0.10/kilowatt hour for electricity, and the mixer and lights add up to a power cost less then $0.01.
Having computed the price of natural gas, I can also estimate other costs. It takes around 15 minutes to fill the bathtub. My water heater heats the water as it's needed with a 150,000 BTU burner. So a bath costs $0.43, plus water pumping costs-- almost $13/month. A full load of laundry takes about 5 minutes of hot water, so about $0.15/load.
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White flowers in red light
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Talon and I had promised Alex we would make her dinner for her birthday and tonight we made good on our word. Talon concentrated on the main course and I worked on bread and desert. The meal was a stake kabob marinated with a sweet wine and teriyaki base. The bread I made was a rich French bread. I started a preferment of yeast and flour in the morning and gave it around 8 hours to ferment. Along with the flour, salt and remaining yeast, I added two tablespoons of olive oil. For desert, we decided on a hot fudge brownie, but didn't have time to make the fudge. Instead, we planned to dip the ice-cream in dark chocolate and top it all off with a fresh strawberry.
The dinner turned out quite well and the bread's rich flavor helped to complement the sweet kabobs. The desert could have turned out better. Although the flavor was what we expected, the presentation wasn't as good as we had hopped. In all though, preparing the meal was a lot of fun, and I think Alex enjoyed her birthday dinner.
Tonight was suppose to be an Altered Reality movie night. However, only a few people turned out. So, we spent the evening chatting in the loft instead.
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Somewhat random selective color
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What can I say? Today was wonderful :)
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